External modulation has been used in some semiconductor laser systems where one or a few edge emitting lasers were used in a linear arrangement. Single channel use of modulators with edge emitting lasers in a package is also therefore possible. However, presently, two dimensional arrays of edge emitting semiconductor lasers are not in the prior art, hence integration of modulators with such lasers is not possible in the prior art. In addition, modulators that can be integrated with arrays of vertical emitting format lasers, particularly, vertical emitting cavity, distributed feedback (DFB) lasers and distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers, are not available in the prior art.